Jobless offered free glimpse into very slightly better future

BRITAIN’S unemployed are being offered the chance to experience what life might be like if they had an extra £7.50 a week.

John's great-great-great grandfather did work experience too

Ministers insist the controversial scheme will not only give unemployed people the chance to have less free time, but also comes with all the stress of a low-paid job.

The scheme, co-ordinated by employment agency Phone-a-Slave, helps people with no jobs to go and work for a big shop that will not pay them any money.

A government spokesman said: “The initiative is aimed at showing jobseekers that if they are prepared to give up a life of benefits and meaningless boredom for a life of miminum-wage drudgery and boredom, a marginally different and only very fractionally better way of life could be theirs.”

A spokesman for Phone-a-Slave said: “The scheme is proving very popular with businesses that want slaves. It’s very easy, they just phone the 0800 number tell us how many slaves they want and then we send an invoice to Iain Duncan Smith.”

Nathan Muir, 26, an unpaid shelf at Peterborough Tesco, said: “I was unemployed for five years and had resigned myself to giving up my dreams and quietly descending into alcoholism without anyone bothering me.

“But now my dreams could dwindle and die during years of meaningless, hopeless toil, instead.